Thursday, May 15, 2014

Tori Amos and some reaction to the new album

I ended up buying it twice. First, it's in Mike and my Amazon cloud, we downloaded it from Amazon. Second, there's a small music store by my office and they have vinyl and a few new CDs and a lot of used CDs and I was walking past it Wednesday at lunch and ended up darting inside as I so often do.

I ended up buying it on CD.

I am glad I did. I like the booklet.

It didn't provide any bonus tracks because the store just had the basic version.

The other reason I liked buying it was that -- and I tell myself this all the time -- I was supporting an independent store and a music store at that -- in a time when they're disappearing.

Also, I'm supporting real music by an artist.

On the topic of Tori, what is Sady Doyle's problem?

Ann wrote "Sade Doyle disappoints" (no, that's not a typo, Ann was calling her "Sade"). In it, she rightly noted how Doyle pits Tori against one woman after another. That makes no sense.

Now there is this:Here's a startling fact: Tori Amos's first single in advance of Little Earthquakes was ","
backed with "Me and a Gun." On one side, a viscerally disturbing
account of sexual assault; on the other, a string-laden piano ballad in
which the narrator updates you on her menstruation. That was the first
impression Tori Amos ever sought to make. Right away, it was clear: This
woman had GUTS. She's taken huge risks: Singles aiming
for the ever-trendy "techno harpsichord" aesthetic? Building her
reputation on solo piano performance, then knocking that down to tour
with a huge, loud band? Nine-minute song that's just a list of plants,
18-track album about American history, dramatic readings of ? You can find all this in Amos' catalog, along with attacks on homophobia, sexism and Christian fundamentalism. Unlike, say, Lady Gaga ,
you never get the sense that Amos' politics or "shocking" choices are
part of a cynical marketing strategy. It's just the sound of a woman who
is absolutely assured of what she has to say, and how she wants to say
it. Which, given the world we live in, is the most courageous thing of
all. —Sady Doyle

First off, way to piss of Lady Gaga fans unfamiliar with Tori. Why would they listen to Tori now if they never had before? If she was someone new to them, why bother to listen?

Tori really isn't about trashing female artists. She goes out of her way to be compassionate towards other females in the recording industry.

Kat provided context for Tori -- noting that, like Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison, she's an artist and an original. When it was time for compare and contrast, she went with Bruce Springsteen. Documenting how Sony promotes the hell out of him and he can't deliver sales and the art is gone and he's just a coward with nothing to say.

But Doyle sees Tori as a stick to beat other women.

That's not going to turn people on to Tori.

You also have to wonder why does Doyle hate women so much, why is she always creating the 'exception,' the queen bee?

Wednesday, May 14, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, the Senate
Veterans Affairs Committee gears up to question VA Secretary Eric
Shinseki, prior to that a new VA scandal breaks today, some Iraqi
parliamentarians continue to pursue the war on Iraqi women and girls, we
examine WMC's inability to cover this and their other problems (which
are many), and much more.

Starting in the US with veterans issues, Senator Patty Murray's office issued the following today:

(Washington, D.C.) – TOMMORROW, Thursday, May 15th, 2014, at 10:00 AM ET/ 7:00 AM PST, U.S.
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) a senior member of the Senate Committee on
Veterans’ Affairs, will attend a hearing to examine the State of VA Health Care
with Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. At the
hearing, Murray will question Secretary Shinseki on recent allegations
that patients died while waiting for treatment at VA hospitals, and ask
him what immediate changes will be made to finally restore long-overdue
accountability, transparency, and confidence in the VAsystem.

WHO: U.S. Senator Patty Murray

WHAT: Sen. Murray will attend Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on the State of VA Health Care

Two of the articles we're about to highlight on this issue try to put
this in terms of Democrats and Republicans, they see that as how the
hearing tomorrow will play out with Democrats supporting/rescuing
Shinseki and Republicans being harsh.

First off, Ranking Member Richard Burr is always 'harsh.' He demands
accountability of Shinseki. He did the same thing when Bully Boy Bush
was in the White House.

Second, if Democrats do that, then they're creating problems for themselves in an election year.

If Democrats on the Comittee -- that includes Senator Murray -- and
Socialist Bernie Sanders who Chairs the Committee and votes with the
Democrats -- are seen as soft, they're hurting themselves in an election
year.

Since January 2007, Democrats have controlled the Senate.

And if they're rescuing Shinseki tomorrow and not holding him
accountable, it's going to be noticed and it's going to lead to a
suspicion/charge/accusation that they're not holding Shinseki
accountable right now because, while in power the entire time he has
been VA Secretary, they haven't provided proper oversight so they're
trying to mitigate the scandal.

I don't expect Patty Murray to go soft. She's not done gone soft in the past with Shinseki or with the VA.

Chair Sanders?

A lot of veterans are complaining that he already went soft in an April 30th hearing (see the May 1st snapshot for
that hearing). I have countered that the topic of the hearing --
alternative treatments -- is his key issue as Chair and that he was
focused on that. But I could be wrong and I often am so I guess we'll
find out tomorrow where he stands on this issue because we will be
covering the hearing and if the Democrats on the Senate embarrass
themselves by forgetting they're on that Committee to serve the veterans
and not to provide cover for the VA, we'll be noting it. And if that
means we're calling out like we do with the ridiculous US House Rep
Corrine Brown, then that's what it means.

And on Corrine and her wacky wigs, someone noted Women's Media Center and it's crappy charge that Fishbowl was sexist for asking if Corrine wore a wig.
Now I know the issue of wigs is sensitive for the elderly women of
Women's Media Center. When you're elderly and still try to pass
yourself off as a sex kitten it can be a little embarrassing. Equally
true when you show up for hearings with your wig not on proper, people
will talk. Corrine has had it half way around her head in a hearing and
not even noticed. Equally true, when you hair changes colors and
length daily, it's a pretty good tip off that it's a wig. Equally true,
cheap is cheap. When I had chemo, I bought a wig expecting my hair to
fall out. I got lucky, it didn't. But I wasn't going to put a cheap
wig on my head. Robert Redford wears a cheap rug. I've noted that
before too. It's not sexist. But it's great to know WMC wastes
everyone's time -- including their own limited time -- but can't say a
word to defend the women of Iraq. We will be coming back to that in the
snapshot.

Shinseki's leadership has come under fire after claims that up to 40
veterans' deaths have been linked to excessive wait times for service at
a Phoenix VA facility, where officials may have kept separate record
books to hide the problem.Whistle-blowers in other states have
raised similar concerns of long waits and other problems with VA care,
including in Mississippi, Missouri and Texas.

Charles S. Clark (National Journal) offers, "The tales of delays, 40 perhaps unnecessary deaths and alleged secret
waiting lists in Phoenix -- announced in late April by Miller -- were
first publicized in a CNN interview with Dr. Samuel Foote, now retired after 25 years in VA clinical work. Foote had also contacted the VA
inspector general. The nonprofit Project on Government Oversight just
before Shinseki’s Thursday appearance is joining with Iraq and
Afghanistan Veterans of America in a press conference on how to protect
whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing at the VA." Rob Hunter (KTAR) notes, "Phoenix isn't the only place affected. Whistleblowers, following Phoenix
VA Dr. Sam Foote's example, are coming forward in many other cities and
states detailing health care problems and cover-ups. Clearly it's a
nationwide problem. This isn't a secret. The care has been horrible for
years and nothing is ever done to fix it. See, providing veterans health care is a social contract, an obligation."

Is US President Barack Obama taking the issue seriously? Julie Pace (AP) reports
that Barack has "temporarily assigned" his Deputy Chief of Staff Rob
Nabors "to oversee a review" of the VA. Let's hope Rob Nabors does a
better job than Jonathan Winer. We'll come back to Winer tomorrow.

The VA’s “method of calculating the waiting times of new patients
understates the actual waiting times,” the agency’s inspector general said
in a 2007 report on outpatient visits. “Because of past problems
associated with schedulers not entering the correct desired date when
creating appointments, [the VA] uses the appointment creation date as
the starting point for measuring the waiting times for new
appointments.”

In 2012, the IG said
that when it came to getting a mental-health appointment within the VA
goal of 14 days, the agency claimed it met that target 95% of the time.
But after drilling deeper into VA data, the IG concluded only 49% got
their appointments within two weeks.

That same year, the IG reported
that patients at a VA facility in Temple, Texas, had “prolonged wait
times for GI [gastroenterology] care [that] lead to delays in diagnosis
of colorectal and other cancers…staff indicated that appointments were
routinely made incorrectly by using the next available appointment date
instead of the patient’s desired date.”

Not surprisingly, the longer the wait for care, the worse the
result. “Long-term outcomes, such as death and preventable
hospitalizations, are more common for veterans who seek care at
facilities that have longer wait times than for veterans at facilities
that have shorter wait times,” the federal Institute of Medicine said last year.

I hope the two reports (we link to them above but don't quote from that
part of it) are wrong about Thursday's hearing splitting into Democrats
and Republicans. The two reports are wrong to treat the current scandal
as isolated when, in fact, it's part of a broad vista of never-ending
VA scandals.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has systematically failed to
follow its own rules governing the prescription of addictive narcotic
painkillers, contributing to overdoses and deaths, according to 68-page
report released today by the agency’s inspector general.The audit
comes a day before Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki is to
testify before a Senate committee to answer allegations that dozens of
veterans in Phoenix died waiting for care.

“They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t care,” said Steven
Harvey, a 57-year-old Army veteran who was sent home with morphine even
after he fell into a coma when he was given 10 times the recommended
dose of the painkiller fentanyl during a routine procedure to remove a
kidney stone at a Los Angeles VA in August 2012.

Every time you take a breath it seems, a new VA scandal emerges.

And if it's not a corruption scandal -- where people lie about wait
times to get bonuses -- then it's incompetence scandal. Eric Shinseki
has shown no leadership. Jordain Carney and Stacy Kaper offer "Obama Has Ever Reason To Fix The VA. Why Hasn't He?" (National Journal) and we'll note this from the article:

The backlog list was cut to more than 300,000 as of May 10.
If the VA maintains the current average monthly rate, the backlog could
be cut by mid-2015. That would meet Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric
Shinseki's 2010 pledge to eliminate the backlog by the end of next year.

Critics,
however, say the shrinking backlog is something of a farce, the result
of an administrative maneuver that has not delivered results for the
veterans in the backlog, but has instead moved them into a different
waiting line. When taking into consideration all VA claims, including
those were the veterans died waiting for a decision, those stuck in
appeals, and award adjustments—often adding a spouse or child—the VA's
inventory of claims is much higher still hovering just under a
whopping 1.3 million. (By comparison when Obama took office in January
2009, the inventory of claims was about half that amount: 631,000.)

As
of May 10, the VA's number of appealed claims stood at 274,660, almost
100,000 more than the 174,891 appeals in late 2009. Between 2012 and
2013 the number of claims that ended up in appeal grew 5 percent, and
between the end of 2013 and March 31 the number of appeals kept rising
2.7 percent. Once in the appeals process, veterans can wait in limbo for
an average of two and a half years.

Critics
contend that list is growing because, as the agency endeavored to
quickly work through the claims, it has made more errors.

We've covered that issue extensively here. We've done that because I
called out when the VA presented to Congress as the answer. It's not an
answer, it's a shell game. We called it that then, we call it that
now. It's taken nearly two years but at least the press acknowledges
the possibility that this is what's happening.

Let's move to the topic of Iraq. At the conservative Commentary, Michael Rubin takes issue with the International Crisis Group's report at the end of April, "Iraq: Falluja’s Faustian Bargain."
We noted the report when it was released but only briefly. Everything
that wasn't elections (Iraq held parliamentary elections April 30th)
had to be brief or put on hold. I meant to get back to that report and
two others and haven't thus far. I'm not a fan of the ICG and, in
better times, we didn't even note them.

Better times? That's when the whole left was concerned about Iraq. Of
course, now I realize they really weren't, the bulk was just concerned
with electing Democrats and they pretended to care about Iraq so they
could tap into the outrage and use it as motivation tool.

So in late 2005, ICG got an e-mail from me explaining just what I
thought of them and asking them to stop sending links to their Iraq
reports, talking points, et al to the public e-mail account for this
site.

Now days, they, RAND, Brookings and other sites we would never note can
get links because we don't have a lot to work with since so many walked
away from Iraq. We also now link to conservatives -- like Rubin -- on
Iraq (a) to note their arguments and (b) with the hope that the left may
grow the hell up and realize their silence on Iraq is handing the topic
to the right-wing.

Rubin writes:

This is a pretty problematic recasting of a narrative of what happened.
While I fault Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for letting electoral
calculations color the timing of military action against al-Qaeda in
al-Anbar (and while I find reason to criticize Maliki for other aspects
of his administration as well), it is inane to suggest that the protest
camps did not include al-Qaeda elements. Indeed, there is quite a lot of
video evidence
to suggest they did. The ICG, for its part, confuses chronology when
they declare, “The crisis has rescued Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s
chances in the parliamentary elections, which, until ISIL entered the
picture, appeared grim.” As the Syrian conflict has metathesized, ISIL
had been a growing threat in Iraq, responsible for dozens of attacks
that killed hundreds of Iraqi civilians. And while Maliki’s third term
was and is far from certain, the idea that his chances were ever “grim”
is simply wrong. Elections should determine destiny. Alas, rather than
simply let elections determine al-Anbar’s fate, the ICG appears to
castigate the many Sunnis from local parties who have joined in
coalition against the terrorists in al-Anbar. Encouraging
cross-sectarian (and cross-ethnic) political groupings is something the
ICG should encourage. Shame on them and anyone else who does not do so.

Actually, the ICG is correct in everything Rubin says they're wrong in
above. Nouri did use the attack on Anbar for "electoral calculations"
-- even Rubin agrees with that. But he then insists that using the
attack on Anbar was not about 'rescuing' Nouri's "chances in the
parliamentary elections." Then why did he use it for electoral
calculations -- which, again, Rubin admits happened.

Does Michael Rubin not grasp his inconsistency?

He's right that a third term is far from certain but it was a lot less certain in the closing months of 2013.

He's failed to prove that Syria is responsible for attacks.

In fact, basic logic would be that Syria is a drain on terrorism in
Iraq. That if it's as out of control as Rubin agrees it is in Syria,
then that's pulling actors who could be blowing things up in Iraq.

But unlike Commentary, we covered the Iraqi protests here every Friday while they took place.

Did people dubbed al Qaeda join in?

Yes, at various points they did. One of the most successful aspects of
the protests was blocking the main highway. And when Nouri threatened
the lives of those protesters, men with dark scarves over their lower
face came to the protests -- which wasn't a surprise because a Sunni
genocide was taking place and the fighters had long said if Nouri
crossed X-line with the protesters, they would be out with their guns.

And that is what happened.

And the protests weren't just in Anbar. How stupid does Michael think
we all are? They were in Baghdad, they were in Kirkuk Province, they
were in Nineveh Province and elsewhere.

Rubin doesn't know what he's talking about.

This is why I address only a certain number of topics and am never embarrassed to say, "I don't know."

Rubin is like Phyllis Bennis. By 2006, Phyl lost in Iraq. So when it
would become a hot topic, she'd try to 'brush' up before her media
appearence and she'd get everything wrong. For example, months after
Nancy A. Youssef had published (on the last day of Knight-Ridder) that
the US military was keeping a count of the Iraqi dead, there was Phyllis
on the Pacifica airwaves insisting that the US probably was keeping a
body count even though they said they weren't. Months after Youssef had
reported this, Phyllis was still unaware. She's so bad these days that
she doesn't even bother to back herself up, offering one commentary
that contradicts another.

Rubin didn't care about the protests.

He's still not interested in the violence Nouri's thugs carried out --
in the murders they carried out. He never bothered to address the
protesters demands -- I'm talking about Michael Rubin never bothered.
He feels the need to whine a little like the useless voice he is and
it's all for naught.

I said I was no expert on conservative media but if I had to guess it
would be because they're uninformed and stupid -- like the bulk of the
media in the middle, on the left, wherever.

Again note this:

Alas, rather than simply let elections determine al-Anbar’s fate, the
ICG appears to castigate the many Sunnis from local parties who have
joined in coalition against the terrorists in al-Anbar. Encouraging
cross-sectarian (and cross-ethnic) political groupings is something the
ICG should encourage.

Not all areas of Anbar were allowed to vote and we should note that.

But why's he slamming ICG? He doesn't think they respect elections.
But the ICG didn't broker The Erbil Agreement. The US government did
and did so, in fall 2010, to give a Nouri a second term after he'd lost
it at the ballot box in the March 2010 elections. And a cross-sectarian
grouping needs to be encouraged?

That's what was put into The Erbil Agreement. And Nouri, after he was named prime minister, refused to honor the contract.

So why isn't Michael Rubin writing about that?

Again, my best guess is because uninformed.

Not unlike Mitt Romney who decided to campaign on a falsehood of Barack withdrawing from Iraq.

What an idiot.

Not only did Barack send special-ops back into Iraq in the fall of 2012, but Tim Arango reported on it for the New York Times mere days before the first debate between Barack and Mitt.

Not only was it not factual, the argument Mitt wanted to make, it was also just plain stupid.

If Barack had done a withdrawal from Iraq?

He would have gotten my vote in 2012. He really would have. (I voted
in the 2012 election, I did not vote for the office of president -- no
one earned my vote in that race.)

And portraying Barack as having pulled out of Iraq was not going to cost
him voters. Even Republicans were against the war at the end. Over
60% of Americans wanted the Iraq War to end. In fact, they wanted it so
badly that some lie to themselves today and pretend that it did end.

It was stupid.

It's like accusing Barack of having given candy to children -- who's
going to be mad about that (other than parents of diabetic children)?

The criticism that need to be leveled at Barack on Iraq included (a) you
say you withdrew troops so why don't you get honest in this debate and
tell the American people that you sent a brigade of special-ops back
into Iraq mere weeks ago? Why don't you tell the American people
tonight what Tim Arango reported
days ago, "At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General
Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently
deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with
intelligence"?

Now it's not a surprise Barack did that. In sotto voice, he said he would. He said it to the New York Times while
he was running for president. But the New York Times always protects
Barack so they didn't print in their story. You had to read the
transcript of the interview which they posted to discover that Barack
was saying if violence increased after 'combat forces' left, he'd send
US troops back in.

But Mitt should have hit him with that and then hit him with (b) your
administration has mismanaged Iraq as evidenced by the increased
violence, as evidenced by the fact you can't keep an ambassador to Iraq
for more than a year, that you go through ambassadors like Murphy Brown
went through assistants, and that you refused to back the Iraqi people
when they gave the win in the 2010 elections to Ayad Allawi. Not only
that, but you promised Allawi things. You got on the phone with him in
November 2010 to talk him into sending Iraqiya back into Parliament
(they walked when Nouri refused to implement The Erbil Agreement on the
spot -- he insisted he needed time, time never came for Nouri and he
never honored it).

That was how Mitt should have addressed Iraq: "You said troops out and
then you sent them back in while you played musical chairs with the post
of Ambassador to Iraq and refused to fight for The Erbil Agreement that
you swore had the full backing of the US government."

Mitt's an idiot.

So is Michael Rubin unless he just wants to talk to himself.

On the left, we've gotten really good about doing that. That's why we
make jokes about the dead in Benghazi (Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean
Smith and Ambassador Chris Stevens -- and, no, I don't make jokes about
them) because we only talk to ourselves and we think it's cute and
funny.

It's disgusting and it makes us look disgusting.

But clearly Michael Rubin on the right is only interested in talking to
the right so he will invent this fantasy of Iraq failing because Barack
pulled all troops out and walked away.

I wish that had happened -- if it had, again, Barack would have gotten my vote in 2012.

We make come back to Rubin's article because it's dishonest on another
point. For now, we need to move on to Iraqi girls and women.

April 16th, on KPFA's Voices of the Middle East and North Africa,
the controversial bill which passed Iraq's Cabinet of Ministers and
that chief thug and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has forwarded to the
Parliament was discussed.

Shahram Aghamir: Last month the Iraqi Cabinet approved a new personal
status legislation called the Ja'fari law which is named after the
sixth Shi'ite Imam, Ja'far al-Sadiq who established a school of
jurisprudence in Medina in the 8th century. This legislation has
created an uproar among Iraqi women's rights and the civil rights
community. If approved, the Ja'fari law will abolish the current
Personal Status Law 188 which is considered one of the most progressive
in the Arab world. The new law will roll back the rights of women in
marriage, divorce and child custody as well as inheritance. It will
lower the age of marriage for girls from 18 to 9 and boys to 15. Who
has initially proposed the law and what are the implications of this law
for Iraqi women? Malihe spoke with Iraqi women's rights activist Basma
al-Khateeb who volunteers with Iraq's 1st Convention on the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women Shadow Report Coalition as an expert
and a trainer.Basma al-Khateeb: Actually, the Minister of Justice by the end of
October declared that they have a committee -- expert committee -- and
they have finished drafting the Ja'fari law. It consists of 256
articles and he's going to present it to the Cabinet by the next
session. He says that they've been working on for the past two years.Malihe Razazan: Back in 2004, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim who died in 2009,
he was in exile in Iran for 20 years before the invasion, and after the
occupation of Iraq, he worked very closely with the Americans. His
party worked to pass Decision 137 issue by interim governing council to
abolish the Personal Status Law Number 188 which was passed in 1959 --Basma al-Kahteeb: That was actually the first thing that he -- that
he issued, this Resolution 137 -- as if Iraq had no problems. This was
the only rule that he came up with. And we had demonstrations and we
managed to defeat that. They withdrew it.Malihe Razazan: Yeah, because there was a huge backlash against it.Basma al-Khateeb: But this is historical. His father, Muhsin
al-Hakim, back in 1959, when the civil Personal Status Law was issued,
the religious institutes led by Muhsin al-Hakim back then, his father,
refused this Personal Status Law because it will take all the authority
from the cleric.Malihe Razazan: In matters regarding women's divorce, child custody, inheritance it will be left to civil courts.Basma al-Khateeb: Yes. And this is how our judicial system and
lawyers and colleges and scholars all -- I mean, we're talking about
sixty years that all our institutions -- judicial, court, everything --
is built on it. This -- going back just to abolish all of this -- this
law --the formal law, the Personal Status Law that's still active now.
It doesn't go to clerics, only the judge rules. This current law puts
another council that is in control of judges of courts. It just turns
everything into chaos. Every lawyer has to study all these religious
and cleric institution and legal issues. It doesn't mean that we have
one court. It means that we have more than 20 courts because each
Ayatollah is different in examination with the other. Havilah? Even
though they're Sh'itie, they're different from the Sadr group, they're
different from Sistani interpretation which means multi courts.

Women's Media Center couldn't be bothered with that. They could
fret over Corrine Brown's wig. She puts it on every day -- puts one of
them on every day -- I don't think Corrine's suffering. Nor is it
sexism to note that a woman wears an obvious wig or a man wears an
obvious toupee. Those are what's known as "observations."

At the WMC blog, they haven't blogged since January. They managed four features in April and not one was on the bill above.

April 22nd, they 'joined' up with F-Bomb which also hasn't written about
Iraqi girls and women but has managed to urge high school girls and
women to reject the trappings of prom -- make up, blah, blah, blah. Can
you find a real issue? Not really, they also took on (and I hope Max K
is a woman or the article's even more insulting) women who play "geek
girl" but really, according to the article, don't know about video games
or whatever, they're just faking! That is a sexist article and it's
even more sexist if Max K turns out to be a man.

Well wait, they have, WMC, their Name It Change It nonsense, right? Oh,
wait. They haven't done a damn thing with that since last year.

We keep getting e-mails about Robin Morgan's radio show. And I keep
telling Shirley and Martha, "It's still airing. Ask them why they think
it's not." And the reply is that it's at the website. I didn't have
time until today -- and I'm also not Robin Morgan's assistant or WMC's
p.r. person -- but while looking to see if our Ladies Columbus have yet
to discover Iraq, I saw this:

How stupid are you? It's May and your main page promotes a radio show of Robin's from October.

No wonder people think the radio show is no more. It's May and the main
page promotes an October show after Robin shut the program down for a
month in August. You need to promote the show. You also need to get a
substitute host for Robin when she takes her vacation this year so that
new episodes can be broadcast because repeats aren't going to cut it. I
would suggest Jemu Greene as the substitute host because she can do the
job, she's lively and smart, perfect for radio and didn't she prove that
on WBAI?

Go to this WMC subpage and you'll see Robin's show continues -- in fact Jimmy Carter's been one of her guests this month.

BABAKHAN: (Through translator) There is regression in terms of women's personal freedom, in terms of women's rights.FORDHAM:
The law she's talking about was proposed by the justice minister and
passed by the cabinet. If voted by parliament into law, it would be
voluntary - people can choose to use its rules to set marriage contracts
or write wills. But the lawyer says it could be forced on young girls
and boys. And, it would only apply to Iraq's Shiite Muslims, not its
Sunnis or other minoritiesBABAKHAN: (Through translator) This, of course, nurtures sectarianism and divisions in society.FORDHAM:
Many analysts say that the law is unlikely to be passed, but that it is
a political pitch to shore up support with conservative Shiites. In
Iraq's hinterlands, tribal traditions sometimes allow violence against
women and early marriage.AHLAM AL OBEIDI: (Through translator)
We are a society plagued by patriarchal attitudes and outdated tribal
laws which are all conducive to violence against women.FORDHAM:
That's Ahlam al Obeidi, who hosts a radio show about women's rights in
Baghdad. She says years of war left Iraq with a surplus of women and
lots of poverty. Some people marry off young girls for the dowry.OBEIDI: (Through translator) This is not marriage though, but rather, the selling and buying of young women.

This matters. As does Nouri's War Crimes. He is using collective
punishment in Falluja (collective punishment is a legally defined War
Crime). Saying that terrorists are in Falluja, Nouri uses this to bomb
residential neighborhoods -- again, a War Crime. National Iraqi News Agency notes that five civilians -- all from the same family -- were injured in today's bombing of civilian neighborhoods.